At any given time, a fleet management company may lease numerous vehicles to a plurality of customers for use in the customers' respective vehicle fleets. For example, a given company may lease several vehicles for use by its sales personnel. Another company may lease vehicles not only for use by its sales personnel but also for use by its field service personnel. Yet another company may lease vehicles not only for use by its sales personnel and field service personnel, but also for its executives. A fleet management company may be hired by these companies to manage the companies' leased vehicle fleets. The types of vehicles being leased and the types of leases may vary not only from customer company to customer company, but also within a single customer company. For many customers, both large and small, the needs of their leased vehicle fleets are complex and constantly shifting over time, which inevitably creates complex management issues for fleet managers who are tasked with making management decisions for multiple customers, each of which has its own unique fleet of leased vehicles.
Among the issues that face fleet managers is the delicate matter of determining appropriate credit limits for a customer in connection with that customer's leased vehicle fleet. By allowing customers to lease too many vehicles, a fleet manager may create a situation where the customer's ability to meet its lease payment obligations is threatened. At the same time, by placing too many limits on a customer's leasing ability, a fleet manager may not only alienate the customer but also negatively impact the fleet management company by not realizing the full business potential of the fleet manager's relationship with that customer. It is often the case that the standard credit reports provided by third vendors are insufficient to meet the needs of fleet managers who are assessing the credit to be extended to lease customers.
These issues become particularly acute for fleet managers in connection with customers that are small to medium-sized businesses. Unlike large corporations, financial information about small to medium-sized businesses can be harder to obtain. Furthermore, the margin of error for fleet managers when making decisions on how much credit to extend to small businesses or medium-sized businesses is often less comfortable than it is with respect to large companies because the funds available to such businesses to pay leasing costs are typically significantly less than the funds that a large corporation can access. As such, the inventors herein believe that a tool is needed that allows fleet managers to conduct detailed assessments of their customers' credit profiles so that those fleet managers can make more informed decisions when extending credit to their customers.
In a previous system operated by the assignee of the present invention, fleet managers did not have access to an integrated tool that provided those fleet managers with detailed views of their customers' financial situations and fleet investments and from which those fleet managers could assess a customer's credit situation. For example, no standardized technique was used to determine the risk associated with each customer's fleet. Each fleet manager was essentially free to make independent decisions with respect to his/her customer's credit situation. Moreover, the acquisition and display of customer financial data was not uniform; no standardized technique was available to identify the reliability of the customer financial data. Moreover, this system was limited in the degree to which it could communicate the reliability of the customer's stored financial information in that the system only noted whether financial statements or tax returns were available for the customer (and for how many previous years this data was available). No indicators were systematically provided as to the reliability of that financial data.
In an effort to meet the delicate credit profile management needs for managers of leased vehicle fleets, disclosed herein is an integrated system that provides fleet managers with efficient access to vast stores of financial information about a customer and further allows fleet managers with multiple levels of approval authority to submit requests for changes to a customer's credit profile, review those requests, and take final actions on such requests (i.e., approve or reject the requests). Credit reviews are performed in the context of projected leased vehicle needs of the customer to enable a determination of whether the customer's credit profile supports those needs. The inventive system preferably also allows fleet managers to perform periodic reviews of a customer's credit profile.
Through use of the invention which provides the set of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) disclosed herein, users of the present invention can obtain valuable and detailed views of specific aspects of the customer's various credit limits, the customer's current fleet of leased vehicles, the customer's projected fleet needs, the risk associated with both the customer's current fleet and projected fleet, as well as a wide array of financial information about the customer. Through use of the information displayed in these GUIs, fleet managers can make informed decisions when extending credit to customers.
As such, according to one aspect of the present invention, disclosed herein is a system for managing a credit profile for a customer having a fleet of leased vehicles, the system comprising: (a) a client computer; (b) a server in communication with the client computer; and (c) a database in communication with the server, the database being configured to store a plurality of customer credit profiles; and wherein the server is configured to (1) provide a plurality of GUIs for display on the client computer, wherein at least one of the GUIs is configured to submit a request for a change to a customer's credit profile in response to user input, at least one of the GUIs is configured to display at least a portion of the customer's credit profile in response to user input, and at least one of the GUIs is configured to receive input from the user corresponding to an action to take on the submitted request, and (2) update the customer's credit profile in accordance with the action input. As used herein, the term “credit profile” refers to stored data about a customer company's creditworthiness in connection with vehicle leasing, and includes at least a credit limit corresponding to a maximum amount of monetary credit that has been authorized for extension to the customer and a leased vehicle limit corresponding to a maximum number of leased vehicles that are authorized for the customer's leased vehicle fleet. However, in addition to these fields, the credit profile may also include other limits placed on customers (e.g., a per vehicle credit limit, a per vehicle aftermarket equipment (AME) credit limit, a maximum maintenance management amount, and a maximum risk management amount), as described in greater detail below. The increased number of such limits is believed to be particularly valuable when making decisions in connection with extending credit to small and medium-sized customers.
According to another aspect of the present invention, disclosed herein is a method for managing a credit profile for a customer having a fleet of leased vehicles, the method comprising: (a) providing at least one GUI through which a user can submit a request to review a proposed change to a customer's stored credit profile; (b) providing at least one GUI through which a user can view data stored in a customer's credit profile in response to a submitted credit review request; (c) providing at least one GUI through which a user can provide input corresponding to an approval or rejection of the credit profile change request; and (d) updating the customer's stored credit profile in accordance with the user's approval or rejection input.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, the financial information about the customer that may be stored in each customer's credit profile is preferably accompanied by an identifier that indicates the level of scrutiny that was applied to that financial information, preferably by an external auditor. Preferably a plurality of identifiers exist, each of which corresponds to a different level of scrutiny. These financial information scrutiny indicators are particularly valuable in connection with managing the credit profiles for customers that are smaller in scale than typical large corporations. For many small to medium-sized businesses, fully audited financial statements are not always readily available, but credit decisions will nevertheless have to be made. By providing the scrutiny indicators for customer financial information discussed above, fleet managers are provided with the ability to make better informed decisions when extending credit to their customers.
The method preferably further comprises providing at least one GUI through which a user can selectively choose to request a change in either or both of the customer's credit limit and the customer's vehicle limit, and optionally other credit profile parameters as disclosed in greater detail below.
These and other feature of the invention will be in part apparent and in part pointed out to those of ordinary skill in the art upon a review of the teachings herein. The below described preferred embodiment is meant to be illustrative of the invention and not limiting. Instead the invention is intended to be limited only by the claims and their legal equivalents.